


Skinwalker

by Goethicite



Category: Pacific Rim (2013)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Trans, Daddy Issues, Gen, Genderbending, Misogyny, Rape/Non-con Elements
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-26
Updated: 2013-07-26
Packaged: 2017-12-21 09:56:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,207
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/898929
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Goethicite/pseuds/Goethicite
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Charli Hansen is her father's daughter, until she isn't.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Skinwalker

**Author's Note:**

> Read with caution please. This story is triggery as hell and is very heavy into environmental factors affecting how people choose express themselves to the world. I don't know what else to say other than, sometimes you do things that hurt yourself in the name of love. And sometimes those things end up hurting the person you're trying to protect anyways.

"That's my daughter you have there, Stacker," Dad said, voice thick. "That's my /daughter/." Charli Hansen tipped her head up proudly and smiled. She was Herc Hansen's daughter, pilot of the Striker Eureka, best of the best. As the doors to lift closed, taking her away from the only man she'd ever trailed behind, Charli exhaled slowly to suppress the giddy panic in her throat.

Dad had been larger than life to Charli before K-Day. From the shiny, gold buttons on his uniform to his patent leather shoes, he was her idol and knight in shining armor all in one. Mum was never bitter about the divorce, at least not that Charli ever knew. She always had a smile for Dad when he came to pick up Charli for a weekend or a weeklong trip. Charli was daddy's girl through and through, Herc's little princess with a sword. Dad loved taking her out with him, teaching her to surf on a little board covered in glitter, going camping with her water and some gear stowed in a royal purple pack. Dad never wanted a son. Boys were soldiers who got themselves killed in his world. He loved his little girl in all her hot pink, frilly skirt over combat boots, tomboy in blue lipstick attitude.

They don't talk about K-Day. Charli walked out of Sydney pulling Mum behind her. By the time some soldiers stopped to ask her what she was doing, her bright blue tutu had been torn beyond recognition and the knock off combat boots she loved were falling apart on her feet. She'd dragged Mum's body, wrapped in a sleeping bag, strapped in place to a piece of plywood with gaffer tape, almost forty kilometers to Blacktown. No one believed she'd walked all that way until they saw her take Dad's water filter out of her purple hiking pack and pump enough water from a sludge filled reservoir to fill her hydration pack by herself.

They took Mum's body and found Dad from a card in Mum's wallet. When the soldiers opened the sleeping bag, Charli had screamed and thrown herself at them but not before she'd gotten an eyeful of what a decomposing body looked like after four days being cooked in an insulated sack. Dad had punched the officer when he came to get Charli and had seen his ex-wife's body left laying carelessly in the open sleeping bag, exposed to the world and for Charli to stare at in mute horror. They don't talk about the two years Charli didn't talk at all.

Life after K-Day was nothing like the idyllic, modern childhood Charli had before. They started moving from base to base, following the Jaeger program. Those colorful things she'd loved weren't available anymore. So she got used to cast off military surplus and olive drab. Life changed, and it didn't. Dad wasn't around as much, and when he was, he was exhausted. Charli got used to playing with the other military brats. They ran feral together like a little wolfpack. None of the adults had the heart to admonish them, not after what they'd seen. Charli took the bit of freedom between her teeth and ran with it, leading the worst of troublemakers from one mess to another with a wicked grin. She learned to cook their meager rations on a hot plate for nights Dad didn't make it to the commissary. Dad smiled vaguely and kissed her on top of the head when she dropped by his office with tea or coffee. He never said a word about whatever chaos she'd left in her wake. She watched the Jaeger program grow, saw her Dad in the Conn-Pod and knew she was going to be just like him when she grew up.

Then, puberty hit. Dad cut off her hair and told her to get used to it. He never said why, ignored her crying for the first time, but when she was fourteen, Charli saw a technician grabbed by her ponytail and shoved into wall by an aviator who didn't like the word 'No'. Charli grappled the man, broke his collarbone and ankle. The aviator called her an 'asshole' and 'stuck up dick'. The technician just gave Charli a shaky smile and ran away. Afterwards, Charli looked in the mirror at her buzzed, ginger hair and too broad shoulders and saw the teenage boy, growing into a man, the technican had been frightened by. It was the last in a long line of revelations proving Daddy's little girl had died in Sydney.

Chuck Hansen cleaned his face with his sleeve and left the bathroom where he realized what had to do. He went back to the suite of rooms he shared with his father and started picking up Charli's things to donate or throw away. The pink and blue stuffed unicorn on the bed, an Army recruiting poster with a particularly cute soldier on it, a glass humming bird in purple and green, the precious, plastic palettes of brightly colored make-up, a bottle of nail polish, trainer bras, brightly colored panties, and all the back issues of the teen magazines Dad could find. Chuck bagged it all and took it down the hall to Amy Mai, a Vietnamese engineer with a twelve year old daughter.

"Charli," Amy said urgently when she saw what was in the bag, "Charli, no one cares, honey. You don't have to give this up."

"Chuck," Chuck said, swallowing hard. "Call me Chuck. Charli's a girl’s name. I can't be a girl anymore. Just, make sure it makes her happy, please." Chuck walked away quickly before Amy could say anything else.

When Dad came back from the test run with Romeo Blue, he asked what happened to all the little, pretty things he'd scrounged for his daughter. "I'm your son, Dad," Chuck said flatly, lying shirtless on his cot, staring up at the ceiling. His bare chest was flat, curved only with pectoral muscles and that came from helping the Jaeger mechanics.

"Charli," Dad said sharply. "What are you talking about? Also, sweetheart, put on a shirt."

"Why?" Chuck sat up. "Dad, why should I? There's nothing to cover!"

"We live in close quarters as it is," Dad replied stubbornly. "I don't need to see my daughter half naked on purpose."

Chuck wanted to cry, because, even when Dad was checked out killing kaijus and never around for a hug, he never had a problem with who Charli was. But women weren't Jaeger pilots. A woman fighting the kaiju would always be fighting a war on two fronts, the monster in front of her and the men behind her. If Chuck was going to be the best, to be good enough Dad could never leave him behind again, then he needed all the advantages he could get. "Dad, I'm a boy, okay? I know that now." The words tasted like poison, broken glass, and Mum rotting in hot sunlight.

Dad looked like Chuck gut shot him. "Sweetheart, who told you that? I'll kick his ass. You're my daughter, and I'm proud of you."

"I'm going to be a Jaeger pilot, Dad. I have to be a boy," Chuck pointed out.

"Don't be ridiculous, Doctor Lightcap pilots Brawler Yukon," Dad growled, but his face showed he knew his argument was weak. Lightcap was the exception not the rule. "Charli…"

"Chuck."

"Charli!" Dad barked, horrified.

Chuck gritted his teeth. "My name is Chuck Hansen, son of Hercules Hansen, Jaeger pilot."

Dad gaped, mouth moving like a fish out of water. Chuck glared. After a moment, Dad found his voice, "You are /not/ my son." The words came out hard and staccato as gunfire.

Chuck knew Dad didn't mean it the way it sounded. He knew that, but it felt like confirmation of all the dread buried in his stomach exploding out through his body like a pipe bomb full of nails. "Well, that was a long time coming," Chuck said viciously twisting his mouth into a sneer to hold back the tears. His guts were somewhere on the ocean floor.

"Christ, sweet…kiddo, give me a moment," Dad yelped like a wound wolf. "That's a hell of a thing to spring on a man. Of course you’re my kid, no matter what." The protest sounded weak after the vehemence of his awful proclamation, and he knew it. "Charli… Chuck… Baby…"

"I want you to put me up for the Jaeger Program," Chuck said, swallowing down the bile taste in the back of his throat. His skin was too tight, too wrong. "Tonight. They'll ship me out for training tomorrow, and you'll have all the time you need."

Dad obediently filled out the paperwork. After lights out, they lay there in the dark. Chuck stared up at the ceiling and tried not to cry again. He'd need to learn not to cry if he was going to be a boy. The sound of raspy, wool blankets being push aside, followed by bare foot steps across the floor were plenty of warning for Dad's weight settling on the edge of Chuck's cot. When Chuck was Charli, Dad would crawl into bed with his daughter, wrapping her up tight in his arms, to calm her down. But Chuck was Dad's son, and everything he knew about dads and sons said that Dad shouldn't cuddle up with him. When Dad reached out, Chuck rolled away. They don't talk about that night or the next morning when Chuck took his duffel packed only with his father's cast offs and left to become a Ranger.

The Ranger trainees got a week of leave six months into the program. The two weeks pre-dating leave were psychologically, physically, and emotionally stressful as all the weak links were drummed out. Chuck was dueling for the title top of his class with Mako Mori, acing simulations, hand to hand, and tactics alike. If you survived hell week you were in. Both he and Mori passed with flying colors. He tried not to think about the future, when he'd be assigned a partner who could see that Chuck wasn't actually Chuck Hansen. So it was exhausted, dirty, and swallowing his trepidation, Chuck Hansen came back to spend a week avoiding his father.

Dad didn't even look up from the report he was writing when Chuck banged through the door. "Take a shower. I can smell you from here." The words were clipped, impersonal, eons away from the gently amusement they used to have.

"Yes, sir," Chuck snapped, dropping his duffle on his old bed and stripping off in living area, daring Dad to say something. Dad didn't take the bait, but the water was hot and the soap not the harsh, industrial kind that left a rash on Chuck's legs.

When Chuck finished with his shower, wandering out with a towel around his waist, Dad was still resolutely looking at his report. There was a puppy on the bed next to Chuck's duffel, snoring lustily. It was a bulldog like the one from the cartoons Charli loved so much. Chuck sat down carefully on the cot to keep the towel in place. Slowly, he reached out and delicately ran a finger across the soft fur.

Dad cleared his throat, "He's for you. To keep you company. It's already been approved. He'll go back with you. So train him, okay?"

It was a little sick that Dad was trying to make up for rejecting Chuck by giving him a dog to love him unconditionally. Chuck couldn't bring himself to care. "Hello, mate," he whispered to the snorting puppy. "Hello, Max. You're a good boy."

Max was the next revelation for Chuck. After Max, Dad never tried to touch him again. Instead, Chuck and Dad obsessed over the damn dog like Max was a baby. Dad was actually worse than Chuck, never wanting to be too harsh for fear Max might get upset. It was a sort of equilibrium to a situation no one enjoyed, providing enough stability for Chuck and his father to pilot Vulcan Specter then Striker Eureka. But not enough for them to ever talk.

The day they took Striker to Hong Kong, and Chuck saw Sasha Kaidonovsky he knew why Dad always felt a little heartbroken after dealing with the Russians. The other pilot bleached her hair blond, wore a slashes of crimson lipstick like blood, and lined her eyes in kohl, daring anyone to try her. Through the ghost drift, Chuck got flash of Charli, age twelve, wearing too much red lipstick and beating up a boy who'd taken her friend's candy whenever Sasha laughed where Dad could hear. They don't talk about that either.

In the drift, Stacker Pentecost didn't bring anything, but Chuck brought everything. Stacker didn't say anything, though it was impossible to miss the stream of images and the deep-seated discomfort of his own body Chuck couldn't shake. Dad never said anything. Chuck never drifted with anyone else. Discretely British, the only thing Pentecost pressed forward were his words from before, "You are your father's daughter. We'll be fine."

Chuck smiled a broken little smile hidden by turning his head away. "If we're doing this, you should call me Charli."


End file.
